Milan: Where Fashion Took Over As The Main Tourist Attraction
In Italy's most fashionable city, fashion brands are housed in iconic architectural masterpieces. Is one art form cannibalizing the other?
A weekend in Milan is all you need.
Strolling under the glass dome of the Vittorio Emanuele gallery on a bright September day, the sun filters through, all the way to the mosaic tiles of the colorful floors. The Neoclassical buildings whisper untold stories about forgotten dukes and princesses.
On another, quieter street, the massive wooden gates of the red-brick Palazzo di Brera stand behind, tall and quiet, like an appointed castle guard, as I step into the inner court.
The symmetrical arches of the Main Central Station, in their famous Art Deco style, embrace me as I rush through them to catch a local train.
A weekend in Milan is all you need.
Two days of walking around on the narrow cobblestone streets and the large corso boulevards and you’ll figure it all out.
The palazzos and the basilicas, the opera and the centric mansions all have fallen behind. They all have stepped down from the podium, leaving the top spot to clothing stores in the city where “Milano” has become synonymous with “fashion”.
From stone lace to silk lace
Home to over 50 world-renowned Italian fashion designers, from Armani to Versace, it’s not really a surprise to discover high-end fashion stores on every corner. What’s surprising is the secondary position historic buildings took, as they are now used as a year-round catwalk for brands’ fashion displays.
The carved stone lace on the walls, the gothic arches, the centuries-old inner courts — they are now mere decorative elements in the visitors’ quest for a fashion fix.
Walls that held historic sculptures on their shoulders for centuries are now dressed up with silk and velvet. Under medieval arches, cracked by the passage of times, the intact billboards shine with slogans hinting at luxury and desire.
Window shopping includes admiring mentions of “dal 1919” or “dal 1937” labels. They refer to the year when the clothing companies launched, not the age of the buildings as one would expect.
Clothes and coffee
Remembering that I am in Italy, the country of fashion, pasta and also… coffee, I couldn’t help but compare all the clothes hanging in Neoclassical buildings with a good cup of espresso macchiato.
How so?
After hours of being splashed in the camera objective with the glitzy colors of the trendy brands, I needed a caffeine boost. I imagined a flavored Italian coffee brought to me in an antique porcelain coffee set and wondered if I’d notice the cup before drinking the coffee. Or would I completely ignore the porcelain container and go directly for its contents?
How often do we admire the vessels — whether porcelain cups or Neoclassical architecture — before rushing to the commodities inside them?
Something similar is happening to Milan’s architecture. The inside of many stunning buildings is filled with colorful and trendy clothing, that few of us remember to look at the roofs the mannequins stand under.
Consumerism supreme
Milan is proud of its quadrilatero d’oro, the Golden Square. It’s a central area made up of four streets where all high-end stores are concentrated, the fashion brands extending beyond flagship stores to hotels and cafés spotting their brand names too.
But how about an architectural golden square? How about the Duomo, Milan’s Dome, the Palazzo Reale, La Scala, and the Pinacoteca di Brera? They could form another type of “golden square”, a group of architectural gems in which, thankfully, there are still no fashion stores set up. Or are there?! I lost count.
To be fair, I enjoyed strolling through the streets and stopping to admire some beautiful pieces of clothing displayed. Fashion is art and art has entered gradually in fashion. But seeing the historic buildings — works of art made in stone — take the runner-up place, made me ponder on the value scale in our modern cities.
Time will tell if the city of Milan will know how to accommodate the two forms of art it houses: fashion and architecture, without bringing prejudice to either of them. Because fashion is about how people look, while architecture is how a city looks.
What do you think of this view? Do you find that the fashion in Milan has taken over its iconic architecture as the main tourist attraction?
I did my Erasmus in Vercelli, which is halfway between Milan and Turin, and was surprised by how dressed up everyone was and how many upmarket boutiques there were despite the city being so small. Apparently there was a lot of money around as most people commuted to work in either Turin or Milan and they replicated the way people dress in both cities. As a result I spent a year feeling underdressed. Then I lived in Bologna for another year, which is a very different place, and felt overdressed all of a sudden with the same clothes 😂
I've always loved Milan. I took any opportunity to visit (art exhibitions, my birthday, concerts, anime conventions...) because the idea of being in -what I thought was- a big/real city, was mesmerising and made me feel happy inside.